


Memento Mori

by gardnerhill



Category: Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: Community: watsons_woes, Gen, Great Hiatus, Grief/Mourning, Post-Reichenbach
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-22
Updated: 2015-05-22
Packaged: 2018-03-31 16:43:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 867
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3985396
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gardnerhill/pseuds/gardnerhill
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clear out the old, look into the new.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Memento Mori

**Author's Note:**

> For the 2015 JWP Practice Prompt #1:

Oh God he can’t do this.

But Mrs. Hudson asked him to clear out a few things. He made a promise to a lady. He grits his teeth and limps into the sitting room.

It’s untouched. It literally looks as if the man has just gotten up and left a moment before, and will soon be back. Every item in this room is a knife in his heart.

_You left him and he died alone. It’s the very least you deserve._

He takes off his jacket and hangs up his bowler; it is still embellished with a black band. The required mourning time has passed and his friends at the club are now giving him pointed looks when they see his hat. _Bad Form to display that much sentiment over another chap, Watson, if you understand me. It’d be quite another thing if the deceased was your wife or mother or some such, but really. Some of the fellows are bound to talk._ And he couldn’t even defend his honour, let alone the dead man’s, because the act of trying to encompass what that union had meant to both of them sealed his mouth; it was like trying to swallow a whale. He almost wished he could look those bastards in the eye and coldly say _Why yes, we_ were _queers for each other, brilliant deduction_ – that would be faster and easier.

Nothing in here – it was to remain as if he’d just left the room. Mrs Hudson had been quite adamant about that. “The gentleman’s orders,” she’d said. Watson did not ask; he knew only one man who could give such orders. One living man.

Also this selfsame gentleman’s orders, apparently, that Watson was to remove a few small sundries.

He’d finished pouring everything into the panegyric he’d written, all the words he’d been unable to say at the memorial service flowing out of his pen as if it was his blood instead of ink dripping from the nib. The whole of London had been plunged into mourning at the publication of the final tale in the Strand not a week before. And then Mrs. Hudson had called upon him at his practice.

Into Holmes’ bedroom. It was as meticulously-kept as the main room; bed made, fireplace laden, waste-basket empty.

The desk-drawer, the top one only. The key was in the lock. And there was the proof that the key’s owner, who rarely went anywhere without them, was dead.

He must have offended Mycroft by publishing that story, or the elder Holmes’ government office was receiving trouble from the surviving Moriarty brother. The man couldn’t have found a more painful way to punish him.

Turn. Open.

A hundred knives in the heart.

There, the hated morocco case and its foul contents. The picture of The Woman. Ticket stubs for the opera, concerts, theatre, the racetrack. A small brass instrument which, when unfolded, proves to be a miniature magnifying-lens. A single test tube. A jack-knife. A lead-pencil. A handful of coins. Much of this, the contents of his pockets. His cheque-book is not here – Mary has it under lock and key now, upon the advice of both men. He manages a feeble smile at that memory of her astonished comprehension of her own husband-to-be colluding with his friend to order his future wife to manage his money.

As he was ordered, he takes everything. Most goes into the box he has brought for the purpose, down to the last farthing and concert-ticket (where it will go into the attic, never to be seen or thought of again); the little folding glass he slips into his own pocket, as it may prove useful in dealing with small wounds or closely examining injuries.

As the drawer does not pull fully out, he sweeps his hand through it to make sure he has taken everything. In the very back are a few more stubs and coins, another pencil, and a book. A notebook.

He almost breaks his hand pulling the notebook out. It is a little leather-bound book, much like the ones in which he used to write up his cases. The handwriting, the same as in the note under the cigarette-case, breaks his heart all over again.

He sits on the floor, turning pages. Case notes, sums, lists of street names, one-line appraisals of police (“Stevenson – some promise,” “Hopkins – more with encouragement”), as dry and methodical as all his work. Each word carries his voice.

His eyes are so blurred by the time he approaches the end of the notes mid-notebook that he almost misses the change in handwriting. Even then the line could easily have passed for a police-note – and then explained as wishful thinking.

But he blinks his eyes clear, heart pounding, grateful he’s already on the floor. He fumbles for the little glass in his pocket, looks with shaking hands.

Only because he knows his friend’s writing by heart does he catch the differences in those three words. Just enough to throw off a casual observer. He knows who wrote it the same way he knows who ordered this work. And now he knows why. And where he should go for more information:

_Watson – He lives._


End file.
